FILM REVIEW -- `Island' -- Geena Davis' Ship of Foolishness - SFGate FILM REVIEW -- `Island' -- Geena Davis' Ship of Foolishness PETER STACK, Chronicle Staff Critic Published 4:00 am, Friday, December 22, 1995 CUTTHROAT ISLAND. Adventure drama starring Geena Davis , Matthew Modine , Frank Langella . Directed by Renny Harlin . (PG-13, 123 minutes. At the Kabuki, Century Plaza.) They should have sunk the regretable "Cutthroat Island" before ever casting off. Geena Davis plays a scrappy pirate adroit with sword, haymaker punches and acrobatic leaps. And she looks ridiculous in the role. The film drops anchor today at theaters throughout the Bay Area. It's a swashbuckling extravaganza, but Davis is not convincing. And before anyone objects, it's not because she's a woman. Get out already! This is the '90s, and women can do anything. But they can't escape from a lousy movie any better than a man can.

Davis is plenty tough -- and kinda pretty -- as Morgan, the buccaneer who inherits her late father's ship and part of a treasure map. Yet if she seems silly, audiences have only to wait until her pirating companion, played by Matthew Modine, arrives on the scene to show how swashes can buckle entirely. Ever since the fizzle of "Hook," folks interested in pirates have had little to feed on. They might have been looking forward to "Cutthroat Island," even forgiving its promotional trailer that makes the adventure look like a busybox Matthew Modine and Geena Davis co-star in the pirate epic 'Cutthroat Island' of fake effects, over-rollicking mariner types and too much yard- arm derring-do to take seriously. The bad news: The film, which is more than two hours, is as lousy as the trailer made it look. There must have been some other feature idea for Davis to tackle with her considerable charm and intelligence. Maybe director Renny Harlin, who's her husband, rattled her saber enough to make her want to play the part with such pert zeal that "Cutthroat Island" seems at times like a dizzy Gilbert & Sullivan costume show without any saucy music.

There is lush scenery in the film. Two replicated 17th century pirate ships will be of interest to some viewers, but somehow they look phony (at least to this ship fancier). Morgan's portion of the treasure map is written in Latin and she can't read it. When she learns that a twit named William Shaw (Modine), who passes himself off as a physician, can read Latin, she buys him at an auction where's he's being sold into slavery because he's a knave. A romantic pairing seems inevitable. But with so many stunts to perform, so many sabers and cannon balls and lashes and muskets to deal with, there isn't much time for kissing. A bullying bad guy named Dawg Brown (Frank Langella) is always nearby in his pursuit of the treasure. A couple of stunts are spectacular, but somehow boring at the same time -- no easy feat. The most punishing aspect of "Cutthroat Island" is that it just wears down the viewer with a helter-skelter, needlessly overblown quality. No wonder those old pirates didn't survive -- they were too tired from so much hyperactivity.

Latest from the SFGATE homepage: Click below for the top news from around the Bay Area and beyond. Sign up for our newsletters to be the first to learn about breaking news and more. Go to 'Sign In' and 'Manage Profile' at the top of the page. Geena Davis Stunts | Danger? They're married to it No doubles: Geena Davis does her own stunts in "Cutthroat Island," thanks to the director, her husband Renny Harlin. - tribunedigital-baltimoresun Danger? They're married to it No doubles: Geena Davis does her own stunts in "Cutthroat Island," thanks to the director, her husband Renny Harlin. December 25, 1995|By Stephen Hunter | Stephen Hunter,SUN FILM CRITIC What do you say about a man who hangs his wife by a rope 300 feet over the Caribbean on their honeymoon? Well, he's either very nasty or a movie director. Fortunately for Geena Davis, her husband is a movie director named Renny Harlin, and that's exactly what he did to her on "Cutthroat Island," the $80-million swashbuckler that's just opened.

"You have to put the stars in danger," says Harlin, the affable Finnish action mechanic who pulled the same stunts on people he wasn't sleeping with in "Cliffhanger" (Sylvester Stallone) and "Die Hard 2" (Bruce Willis.) "Audiences are so sophisticated these days. They pick up on stunt doubles right away." And so it is that Davis herself dangles 300 feet over a blue Caribbean with the only thing beneath her raw space and co-star Matthew Modine clinging like a spider monkey to her hoop skirts. Honey, try to keep your knees from shaking. Or does a somersault off a balcony onto a moving carriage, landing squarely in the driver's seat. Sweetie Pie, you didn't give me that big smile when you landed. Let's try it again. Or swings graceful as any movie-Tarzan from ship to ship amid explosions, gunfire and vigorous hand-to-hand combat. Sugar, remember to keep your eyes open when you're halfway between the ships and the cannons go off. Or, finally, is yanked 100 feet into the air at the other end of a falling weight by a rope.

Babe, you know when your head blew through that last floorboard? Uh, you blinked, we have to do it again. "Of course," Harlin admits, "we use very sophisticated stunt technique these days. We can now digitally erase the safety structures that protect the stars through these events." In other words, you don't see the safety harness, the guide wire, the mechanized pulleys and wheels and motors that make it all possible. "It was fantastic," says Harlin in a burst of enthusiasm. "We're both child-like, and this offered us a chance to do stuff that was unbelievable. We had a great time. I actually pushed her harder than anyone else in the cast." Harlin makes his living going where the action is. Or put another way, he is the action. Where he goes, the action follows. That's what he does. That's all he does. "It started when I was a kid," he says. "I loved to play with things and imagine fantastic sequences. In some sense, that's what I'm still doing. I get payed to play as I did when I was a child." The key, he says, is pre-planning.

"You don't want to be on a million-dollar set with no idea what to do next." Not content with mere storyboards, Harlin has scale models built of all his action sequence locations. Then he literally plays with the elements, trying to map out a strategy. "It has to be very meticulously done. I'll take dozens of still photos from the models and try to find the right angles to frame the action. Then we make detailed drawing. Then we have to decide which order to film the individual shots and build the equipment for each one." For example, he says, there were three different carriages built for the escape sequence. "We built one for fighting, one for driving and one for destroying. Our carriage budget was very high." MORE: Geena Davis - Biography - IMDb Geena Davis Biography Showing all 44 items Jump to: Overview (3) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (4) | Trade Mark (3) | Trivia (27) | Personal Quotes (3) | Salary (3) Overview (3) 6' (1.83 m) Mini Bio (1) As a child, Geena dreamed of being an actress.

While in high school, she felt left out and had low self-esteem because, at 6 feet, she was the tallest girl in school. After high school graduation, Geena entered New England College in New Hampshire and then transferred the next year to Boston University, where she majored in drama. In 1979, she graduated and moved to New York to start her career. Her career consisted of sales clerk and waitress. She worked at Ann Taylor, where she eventually rose to Saturday window mannequin while trying to get a job with a modeling agency. Eventually signed by the Zoli Agency, she wound up as a model in the Victoria Secret's Catalogue. Ever vigilant, Sydney Pollack was looking for new talent in the catalog when he spotted Geena and cast her in Tootsie (1982). With good reviews, Geena moved to Los Angeles where she was cast as Wendy in the short-lived but critically acclaimed television series Buffalo Bill (1983). A starter marriage to restaurant manager Richard Emmolo ended in divorce at about that time. Her next appearance on television was in her own series Sara (1985), which was also good, but soon canceled.

Geena then returned to the big screen in the below-average Transylvania 6-5000 (1985) followed by the successful Chevy Chase movie Fletch (1985). From there on, she was on a roll with second husband Jeff Goldblum in the horror remake The Fly (1986). More successful were Tim Burton 's dark comedy Beetlejuice (1988) and The Accidental Tourist (1988). For the last film, she was the surprise winner of the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. More fun movies followed with the flying-saucer-in-the-pool Earth Girls Are Easy (1988) and everyone-loves-a-clown Quick Change (1990) with Bill Murray . The very successful Thelma & Louise (1991), directed by Ridley Scott , again garnered Academy Award nominations for Geena and Susan Sarandon . A League of Their Own (1992), with Tom Hanks and directed by Penny Marshall , was the turning point as her next film, Hero (1992), was only average.

Then she married director Renny Harlin and they set up a production and development company called "The Forge". Their first film was Speechless (1994), which flopped at the box office. Undeterred, Renny decided to film the big-budget Cutthroat Island (1995), starring Geena as pirate leader Morgan, which also flopped. Geena has since starred in the thriller The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) and played Eleanor Little in Stuart Little (1999) and Stuart Little 2 (2002). She's also returned to TV, headlining The Geena Davis Show (2000) and Commander in Chief (2005). Both series were canceled after one season each, but she won a Golden Globe for the latter. Since 2001 she has been married to her fourth husband, neurosurgeon Reza Jarrahy, and they have three children. In 2008, after being missed from the big screen for some years, Geena ventured to Sydney, Australia, playing the foul-mouthed mother of Harry Cook and Harrison Gilbertson to shoot the dark comedy Accidents Happen (2009).

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Tony Fontana <tony.fontana@spacebbs.com> Spouse (4) Trivia (27) Placed 24th out of 28 semi-finalists for Olympic Archery team. [August 1999] Ranked #61 in Empire (UK) magazine's Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time list. [October 1997] Is a member of MENSA (as are James Woods , Alan Rachins , Cy Frost , Ben Rollins and Derek Barbosa ) with an IQ of 140. She speaks Swedish, and attended school in Sweden as an exchange student. Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#31). [1995] In 1996, was the top contender for the role of the evil Queen Beryl in a proposed Sailor Moon live action movie. The project was later scrapped. Was the assistant organist in her church in her hometown in Massachusetts. Her husband, Dr. Reza Jarrahy, a neurosurgeon, is Iranian. His last name, Jarrahy, means "surgery" in Farsi.

Born at 12:06 am-EST. Appeared alongside ex-husband Jeff Goldblum in three films: Transylvania 6-5000 (1985), The Fly (1986) and Earth Girls Are Easy (1988). Graduate of Wareham High School (Wareham, Massachusetts) Class of 1974 who voted her "Most Talented." Wears a size 12 shoe. Auditioned for a regular cast member spot on NBC's Saturday Night Live (1975) in 1984. Her second husband, actor Jeff Goldblum says that he and Geena have remained good friends in the years since their divorce. After graduating from Boston U. she worked as a window mannequin. Said that Accidents Happen (2009) was the most fun she had ever had on a movie, and that her co-stars and on-screen sons Harry Cook and Harrison Gilbertson looked very much like her two twin boys in real life and felt a great friendship and connection to the both of them. Auditioned for the role of Sarah Connor in The Terminator (1984) but lost out to Linda Hamilton .

Turned down a role in The Grifters (1990) (per DVD audio commentary) though it's unclear whether she was offered the part that went to Anjelica Huston or Annette Bening . Turned down the role that went to Kelly McGillis in The Accused (1988). Two of her ex-husbands have also been romantically involved with Laura Dern : Renny Harlin and Jeff Goldblum . Gave birth to her 1st child at age 46, a daughter Alizeh Keshvar Davis Jarrahy on April 10, 2002. Child's father is her 4th husband, Reza Jarrahy. Gave birth to her 2nd and 3rd children at age 48, twin sons Kian William and Kaiis Steven Jarrahy on May 6, 2004. Children's father is her 4th husband, Reza Jarrahy. Delivered her twin sons Kian and Kaiis 26 days early via Caesarean section due to breathing difficulties.

Was the 97th actress to receive an Academy Award; she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for The Accidental Tourist (1988) at The 61st Annual Academy Awards (1989) on March 29, 1989. Replaced Debra Winger who pulled out of A League of Their Own (1992) after learning Madonna was going to be in the film. Daughter of Lucille Cook (1919-2001) and William F. Davis (1913-2009). Geena's father was a civil engineer and church deacon; her mother worked as a teacher's aide. Her brother Danforth (b. 1953) is a geotechnical engineer and lives in Las Vegas with his wife Marilyn.

Personal Quotes (3) I have an elbow that bends the wrong way, and I'd do things like stand in an elevator and the doors would close, and I'd pretend that my arm had got caught in it, and then I'd scream, "Ow, ow, put it back!" [talking about the shows her children watch] As I watched kids' programs with them, I became concerned about gender balance and stereotypes. Boys take up much more space on TV than in real life. [About Thelma & Louise (1991) being considered a male-bashing movie] Most guys don't relate to the truck driver or the rapist, and if they do, their problems are bigger than this movie. Salary (3) The vanity that led to a $100m bonfire | The Independent News The vanity that led to a $100m bonfire Geena Davis believed her acting could carry Cutthroat Island; her director husband thought explosions would do it. But what they came up with was the biggest movie disaster of all time.

Daniel Jeffreys reports Tuesday 9 April 1996 23:02 BST Click to follow The Independent Online "Matthew Modine is sweet but he was the wrong man for Cutthroat Island, especially starring alongside Geena Davis." A senior Hollywood agent told me this back in January. I was curious to know why a movie which cost over $95m to make had been pulled from US cinemas after just two weeks. "That was a picture which desperately needed a big star," she said. "When Michael Douglas pulled out the movie was doomed." Over $100m of losses are now buried in Cutthroat Island. The pirate movie starring Geena Davis and directed by her husband, Renny Harlin, is officially Hollywood's biggest stinker, the number one loss maker of all time. The film is out on video in the US next week but is not expected to take more than $15m from rentals. What is puzzling to many is that Cutthroat Island always seemed destined to lose a fortune. Why, then, was it made?

The answer lies in Hollywood's complicated web of finances and in the demise of Carolco Pictures, a company that raked in over $2bn during the Eighties and early Nineties from movies like Rocky, Terminator 2 and Basic Instinct. These days nobody in Hollywood blinks when a movie is presented with a $60m budget, the original projected cost of Cutthroat Island. The average price tag for a Hollywood movie last year, including production and marketing, was $54m. If a film's producers have a money-making reputation, and Carolco's people had that from their red meat blockbusters, finance is usually forthcoming - even if the original script is dire, as was the case with Cutthroat Island. When the film entered pre-production, Carolco was on a straight course towards the obituary pages. The company was already deep in debt when it began producing the pirate flick in 1994. Carolco executives needed at least one big hit for the summer of 1995 to stay solvent. As 1994 began the company had Cutthroat Island and Arnold Schwarzenegger in Crusade as potential saviours. But it is impossible to produce movies without cash-flow and Carolco had none.

By the spring of 1994 it was clear Carolco could not afford to have both movies in production at the same time. Carolco had already been forced to sell its $20m interest in the dreadful Showgirls so the company abandoned Crusade and placed all its faith in Cutthroat Island, taking a $13m loss on pre-production and Schwarzenegger's contract. "We knew from that point if we lost Cutthroat Island as well bankruptcy would be inevitable," says a senior executive close to the company. "If we made the film, there was at least some chance we could survive." This is the kind of logic that governs many decisions in Hollywood, especially when greed is involved, as it almost always is, particularly with "star vehicles". Once Carolco and its investors concluded that Cutthroat Island was the company's only hope, people stopped asking if it was possible to produce a $90m ocean epic without a bankable male lead and with a weak script that required hundreds of crew members in both Malta and Thailand. "They had to make this movie," Geena Davis told Premiere magazine last month. "The company was dead.

Everybody knew that one way or another, this was their last movie." That was not how Davis saw it during production when she was gung-ho about Carolco and the swashbuckling epic in which she never seems smart or athletic enough for the demanding role of Morgan, the pirate captain. "We have been shooting for five weeks and it's going fantastically well," she gushed to reporters in December 1994. "I'm thoroughly exhausted but we're doing the most amazing stuff I've ever seen." Cutthroat Island only managed to start filming at its expensive foreign locations because of Carolco's brilliance in getting other people to pay its bills. The movie was aggressively pre-sold to overseas film distributors, mainly in Europe and Japan, who made up-front payments for advance rights to show the movie in their territories. By promising more whizz-bang action than a dozen Die-Hard movies, Carolco obtained more than $50m for Cutthroat Island before a frame of film was shot. The same technique was used with Kevin Costner's Waterworld, a leaky boat that left the US with over $80m in debts and returned from overseas runs with a small profit.

The same could have happened with Cutthroat Island and that supposedly made all the gambling worthwhile. While everybody told Carolco executives that the movie was an albatross they, including chairman Mario Kassar, kept hearing the siren song of foreign profits. This may explain why the Carolco executives did so little to stop Cutthroat Island from running out of control financially and artistically. In times gone by a Jack Warner figure would have descended from the studio head office and told Renny Harlin and his demanding wife that they could take a hike. These are gentler times. Cigar chewing studio-bosses with bad attitudes are few and far between, leaving the talent and their agents to get away with murder. The movie business has also been infiltrated by multi-nationals who scent profit or prestige but know little about the mind-bending economics of film-making. When Carolco needed new money to begin Cutthroat Island it found willing investors in Japan's Pioneer Electric Corporation, Canal Plus of France, Rizzoli Editore, of Italy, and the French bank Credit Lyonnais. While Michael Douglas was still tentatively involved in the movie, Davis was pushing for an expansion of her role.

Sources say Douglas quit when Harlin refused to restore the status quo and improve the profile of his male lead. Nobody at Carolco seems to have had sufficient control of the project to insist that Davis scale down her demands or that Harlin give the film all his attention. In fact, Harlin, the director, was allowed to complete other commitments as pre-production on Cutthroat Island began. An escalation in costs was inevitable. Set designers and builders were sent to Malta weeks before Harlin arrived. They built entire streets knowing that the director would want to change almost everything when he finally arrived - he did. The set changes in Malta and the increasingly desperate search for a male lead - which saw versions of the script go to Keanu Reeves, Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes - caused morale at Carolco to plummet. As the date apparoached for the cameras to roll, several senior people involved with the film decided to jump ship, including producer David Nichols and chief camera operator Nicola Pecorini. In Thailand the crew, which was inexperienced with shooting on water, an especially treacherous medium for movie makers, suffered injuries, delays and sickness.

Replacement star Matthew Modine (previously seen in Full Metal Jacket, Memphis Belle, `Married to the Mob and Short Cuts) wrote to friends from Krabi that Davis and her husband had been hit with heat exhaustion and food poisoning. "A lot of the crew were hit with stomach bugs as well," said Modine. "I've stayed well - I won't eat things from the sea here; the waters are so polluted." These were the same waters that many members of the crew had to work in every day. Renny Harlin continued to justify the costs, arguing that they were necessary to convince foreign distributors that the movie would explode with the right kind of special effects, the type that made his Die Hard movie a multi-million dollar winner. Harlin flew in horses from Austria, carpenters from England, stunt men from Poland. In the interests of saving the movie and Carolco Harlin ordered 2,000 costumes, 309 firearms, 620 swords, 250 daggers and almost 100 custom-made axes. A special tank in Malta was used for the fight scenes between two pirate ships.

Harlin insisted on full-sized replicas of 17th-century sailing vessels with 20 cannon a side on two long decks. The ships cost over $1m to build and were able to fight full scale sea battles once the tank's hydraulic wave machine was activated. During filming one of these leviathans caught fire. A disaster was narrowly averted and production was suspended for three costly days. The final tally from all these miscues was staggering. The cost of producing, financing, marketing and distributing Cutthroat Island totalled $121m. Carolco lost about $47m on the project but most of that was carried by the unfortunate investors who bought the company's bonds. Carolco's chairman, Mario Kassar, still received his $1m fee for ensuring that Cutthroat Island was finished. Carolco went into bankruptcy last November, six weeks before Cutthroat Island reached theatres, and that is where it remains. The movie that held the "biggest bomb" title before, Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, lost over $40m in 1980. That movie was driven by an artistic obsession. The destructive force behind Cutthroat Island was financial.

When production began, Carolco could either declare bankruptcy immediately or gamble that its last movie would turn the kind of $100m profits the company earned in the 1980s. The movie business is full of people who want to believe and Carolco played on their gullibility, encouraging new investors to sink money into the marketing of Cutthroat Island, even after early reviews pronounced it dead on arrival. Matthew Modine was an enthusiastic supporter of the film until it was pulled from US cinemas with just $10m of sales. Modine had seen the project as a breakout movie for his career and now he has begun to express some bitterness, especially towards Harlin and Davis. Modine claims that Harlin devoted himself to perfecting Davis's performance but never offered advice to his male star. "It's the first movie I've worked on where the director never really spoke to me," he says. "It was frustrating and Renny spent a lot of his time just finding new ways to blow things up. He likes to blow things up." Critics of Carolco and chairman Kassar now say the company's demise is fitting, the end of an absurd process begun by Kassar himself.

Hollywood was appalled when Kassar began paying stars multi-million dollar salaries in the 1980s. He set up a market in which, by 1994, his former star Arnold Schwarzenegger could command a $20m fee, a sum Carolco could no longer afford. Kassar created the economics which destroyed his company. Does that mean Hollywood has been made wiser by Cutthroat Island? Harlin - who also pushed Die Hard 2 over budget by $23m - is now producing another movie, a female action piece called The Long Kiss Goodnight, which has a $65m budget. The star is one Geena Davis. The script, by Shane Black, cost a Hollywood record $4 and last month the hotel where the film had begun shooting burnt to the ground. A search is under way for a new location. Meanwhile the films that have topped the box office list in the US since Cutthroat Island sank have had budgets well below $50m.

Movies like Dead Man Walking, The Birdcage, Sense and Sensibility, 12 Monkeys and Mr Holland's Opus have all cleared their modest costs with ease making three times as much money between them as Cutthroat Island lost. Next time Hollywood goes looking for buried treasure it might remember that and leave the lavish special effects at home. More about: Geena Davis from Heartbreak to Happiness Makeup Women Over 40 Shouldn't Be Afraid to Try Geena Davis from Heartbreak to Happiness She's got a hunky younger husband, three small kids, and a hit TV show. How the star of Commander in Chief turned her life around. Most Popular Matthew Rolston Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Geena Davis is running behind schedule. She was detained at a gown fitting, and now the rest of her jam-packed day is off-kilter. When she finally sits down at a funky outdoor café near downtown Los Angeles, wearing faded jeans, a hooded sweatshirt, and absolutely no makeup, she orders blueberry pancakes -- even though the sun has set long ago and most of her fellow patrons are eating dinner. Then again, Davis is used to doing things a little later than most people.

Having recently turned 50, she is now celebrating the sort of personal milestones that most women mark in their 30s. Married to Dr. Reza Jarrahy, an Iranian-American neurosurgeon 15 years her junior, she became a mother for the first time at age 46. Two years after the arrival of daughter Alizeh, she gave birth to twins, sons Kian and Kaiis. Just as her personal life was falling into place, her dormant career got a wake-up call when she was offered the role of Mackenzie Allen, the first female U.S. president, on the ABC series Commander in Chief. The drama became the most watched new show of the fall television season, and suddenly Davis was back in the spotlight. In January, Davis won a Golden Globe for best actress in a drama series; she accepted her award with a witty and charming speech that brought the house down. Happy marriage, beautiful babies, blooming career: Everything is, finally, right on track. "It just happened two decades after I thought it would," Davis says with a shrug.

Most Popular Many people still think of her as the tough-girl heroine Thelma, whom she made famous in 1991's Thelma & Louise. But in real life, Davis has been on a long, arduous journey of self-discovery. After starting out as a model in her early 20s, she seemed to segue effortlessly into acting, going from playing a bit part in Tootsie to costarring in Beetlejuice to winning an Academy Award for her role in The Accidental Tourist at age 32. Davis followed her Oscar win with Thelma & Louise and the feel-good baseball comedy A League of Their Own. But just when her career seemed red-hot, it suddenly began to cool. A string of box office disappointments like Cutthroat Island didn't help; neither did getting older in an age-obsessed industry. By then divorced from actor Jeff Goldblum (she later married and split up with director Renny Harlin), Davis felt isolated and confused. "I guess I thought my career would just go on the way it had," she says, shaking her wavy auburn hair. "But once I turned 40, I really did feel like I'd ceased to exist in Hollywood.

I thought I'd have an older-woman's career like Meryl Streep or Jessica Lange did. But not only weren't there roles for me, there weren't any for Meryl either. It was noticeable and unmistakable. And painful." At the same time, not working gave Davis a chance to think about what else she might want to do with her life. She came up with two surprising answers. The first came in the form of a bow and arrow. Having been turned on to archery while making the action film The Long Kiss Goodnight in 1996, she began to pursue the hobby seriously and before long was competing in the National Trials. She came close to qualifying for the Olympics. "I didn't realize archery would become such a big part of my life, but I got completely hooked," she says. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Archery not only helped her fill her days, it sparked a sea change in the way the actress viewed herself. Davis says she had long struggled with self-esteem; when she was a teenager, her lanky six-foot frame and exotic pillow-lip looks weren't exactly the norm, and she often felt like an outcast. But finding a sport she was passionate about began to heal old wounds.

"Sports are 90 percent mental," she explains, "and I came to realize that there was this inner dialogue I was constantly having, where I'd be thinking, Oh, that was a horrible shot, and people must be laughing at you and you should be so embarrassed. I realized that if I was telling myself that during archery, I was probably doing it all the time in the rest of my life. Becoming confident in my physical abilities, acknowledging that I had a right to take up space and be happy with my performance, was the final piece of the puzzle. I started to believe that people weren't judging me every second of my life. I began to really like myself." Emboldened by the self-esteem boost, Davis found herself drawn in to an unlikely romance with Jarrahy, who was only 27 when Davis, then 42, met him at a party. In the past, Davis says, she had found herself attracted to men whom she thought she'd be able to "fix" and turn into the perfect mate. "I was always in the type of relationship where everything was about the other person," she says. "I'd find my worth through sacrificing everything for his sake.

And that had everything to do with my own feelings about myself; the guys I was with felt pretty great about themselves all on their own -- they didn't need me to fix them because they weren't damaged. But I sure was." Advertisement - Continue Reading Below By the time Jarrahy came along, Davis knew that the patterns of her past were ready to be broken. "I finally managed to change myself, and that changed what seemed attractive to me. Reza is so different from the kind of men I used to be with. I think if I met someone now who was like the guys I was drawn to in the past, I would just start to laugh." Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage.com Most Popular Still, Davis admits that the considerable age difference was initially a stumbling block. "A relationship with him seemed a little far-fetched," she says, remembering her initial attraction to the dashingly handsome doctor. "I remember thinking, This guy is cute -- and ridiculously young. At first, to be honest, I was just approaching it like something that would be fun. I wasn't thinking too far ahead of the game. The amazing thing is, when we started to spend more and more time together, there wasn't anything about our age difference that stuck out.

It wasn't like I was sitting there saying, 'What do you mean, you don't know who the Beatles are?' It doesn't feel like we're from different generations, and now we barely notice it at all." Despite three previous marriages, Davis didn't hesitate to make a fourth trip down the aisle. "I did say to Reza, 'You're about to become someone's fourth husband. What on earth are you thinking?' But as for myself, I wasn't nervous at all. I really did feel that I had turned a corner, that I had pulled off changes that were real and permanent. And it was exciting to know I was marrying someone who I can be cranky or selfish in front of and he doesn't run screaming from the room or judge me for it. It's like I discovered a whole other way to live." One year after the two married, Davis's life underwent another change, when the actress became pregnant. First-time motherhood in her 40s didn't unnerve her; instead, the actress saw her age as an advantage. "I felt 100 percent that I would be such a better parent than I would have been even five years earlier and certainly ten or 20 years earlier," she recalls.

"If I'd had kids earlier, I could easily have become one of those mothers who overinvolve themselves and try to live life through their kids. I'm sure there are younger people who have figured things out long before I did, but in my case, I became a parent with exactly the right person, at exactly the right time." Having twins just two years later, however, "was pretty daunting," she says with a sigh. "My daughter was two when they were born, so that meant three kids under the age of three at home. And I was worried because part of me thought, Am I going to be able to love boys as much as I love my little girl? Of course, I do, and it's been really wonderful. But it was overwhelming." Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Davis also admits to feeling a bit swamped when she thinks ahead to a future of raising teenagers at an age when most people begin collecting Social Security. "Oh yeah, I think about that all the time," she says candidly. "There are moments when I feel like I have a looong road ahead of me, with college and dating and driving and all of that. But then I realize that just means that I have so much time left to enjoy them.

And it really does go by so quickly." Now Davis is relishing every second of her role as a mommy. Daughter Alizeh is obsessed with princesses, to the chagrin of her mother, who would rather her little girl show an interest in females who strive to do more than win the heart of Prince Charming. Still, Alizeh is already putting her own twist on the fairy tales. "She likes to tell stories about Snow White going into the forest, where she meets an evil witch. But then Snow White takes out a magic wand and turns the evil witch into a nice witch. It's a good thought," Davis says with a laugh. "She never wants to play princesses who are just lying there asleep or under some spell. They're always very active princesses who battle dragons or evil witches." As for her parenting style, Davis is making certain not to repeat mistakes from her own childhood. "It's important to me that my kids feel acknowledged," says Davis, who grew up with an older brother in Wareham, Massachusetts. "I was raised in a generation where we were taught to stifle things.

It was like, 'Don't cry.' Or, as soon as you fell down, you were told, 'That didn't hurt.' Kids were supposed to be seen but not heard, like they were furniture or pets or something. I'm making a point of letting my kids know it's OK to express themselves. I try not to decide for them what they're feeling. I want them to know they don't have to hide their emotions." Their mother seems to have taken that lesson to heart. Asked about turning 50, she doesn't hesitate to roll her eyes and groan. "Actually, I am OK with it," Davis says a few moments later. "I don't exactly want to jump up and down on Oprah's couch, but I'm at peace with it. I feel like my life has gotten better with every year that goes by, and so I really don't fear getting older. And this is going to sound crazy, but I like the way I look now more than I did ten years ago. I feel like I've settled into my looks more and that I'm more at ease, and it shows.

I'm not saying I'll still feel that way when I'm 70, but for now, I'm pretty content." Her happiness has been coming through on the set of Commander in Chief. Peter Coyote, who has guest-starred on the show, says that of all the stars he's worked with, Davis is "my favorite. She has no entourage and no attitude. Between takes, she sits with everyone, knitting, chatting, and playing practical jokes. She is a joy." Playing the president of the United States has come naturally to Davis. In 2004, she founded an activist group called See Jane, which seeks to improve the portrayals of girls and women in the media. Now she hopes her television role will inspire other changes. "I cannot tell you how many people ask me, 'So do you think there will ever be a female president in real life?' I mean, why shouldn't there be?" she says, her voice rising. "When people ask me that, it really makes me want to examine why the idea of women in power is so threatening." But she won't be able to get to that today. With her pancakes long since polished off, Davis needs to get home for bath time with her kids.

"My daughter won't even get her face wet, but my sons literally submerge themselves and try to swim laps in the tub. They stick their whole heads under and blow bubbles," she says with a delighted laugh. "I can't tell you how much I look forward to it." She slings her bag over her shoulder and hurries off into the night. With any luck, she'll be right on time. More from Good Housekeeping: Cutthroat Island [DVD]: Amazon.co.uk: Geena Davis, Matthew Modine, Frank Langella, Maury Chaykin, Patrick Malahide, Stan Shaw, Rex Linn, Paul Dillon, Christopher Masterson, Jimmy Skaggs, Harris Yulin, Carl Chase, Peter Geeves, Angus Wright, Ken Bones, Mary Pegler, Mary Peach, Lucinda Aurel, Thomas Lockyer, Roger Booth, George Murcell, Simon Atherton, Dickey Beer, Christopher Halliday, Renny Harlin: DVD & Blu-ray Cutthroat Island [DVD] Â£5.00 & FREE Delivery in the UK on orders dispatched by Amazon over Â£20. Details Only 5 left in stock. This item can be delivered to your selected dispatch location in the United States.

Details Sold by 247dvd and Fulfilled by Amazon . Gift-wrap available. Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) is a service Amazon offers sellers that lets them store their products in Amazon's warehouses, and Amazon directly does the picking, packing, shipping and customer service on these items. Something Amazon hopes you'll especially enjoy: FBA items are eligible for and for Amazon Prime just as if they were Amazon items. If you're a seller, you can increase your sales significantly by using Fulfilment by Amazon. We invite you to learn more about this programme . Note: This item is eligible for click and collect. Details Pick up your parcel at a time and place that suits you. Choose from over 13,000 locations across the UK Prime members get unlimited deliveries at no additional cost How to order to an Amazon Pickup Location?

Find your preferred location and add it to your address book Dispatch to this address when you check out 11 new from Â£3.75 12 used from Â£0.96 1 collectible from Â£17.99 See all buying options Cutthroat Island [DVD] Â£5.00 & FREE Delivery in the UK on orders dispatched by Amazon over Â£20. Details Only 5 left in stock. Sold by 247dvd and Fulfilled by Amazon . Gift-wrap available. Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) is a service Amazon offers sellers that lets them store their products in Amazon's warehouses, and Amazon directly does the picking, packing, shipping and customer service on these items. Something Amazon hopes you'll especially enjoy: FBA items are eligible for and for Amazon Prime just as if they were Amazon items. If you're a seller, you can increase your sales significantly by using Fulfilment by Amazon. We invite you to learn more about this programme . Frequently Bought Together One of these items is dispatched sooner than the other.

Show details Buy the selected items together This item:Cutthroat Island [DVD] by Geena Davis DVD Â£5.00 Only 5 left in stock. Sold by 247dvd and sent from Amazon Fulfillment. FREE Delivery on orders over Â£20. Details Long Ships [DVD] by Richard Widmark DVD Â£4.63 In stock. Sold by Discs4all and sent from Amazon Fulfillment. FREE Delivery on orders over Â£20. Details What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item? Language: English, German, Spanish, Italian Subtitles: English, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Turkish Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats. ) Aspect Ratio: 16:9 - 2.35:1 DVD Release Date: 20 May 2002 Run Time: 118 minutes Product Description Product Description Pirate's daughter Morgan (Geena Davis) needs to get the remaining two parts of a map from her evil uncles, Captain Dawg and Mordachai Fingers, in order to find her dead father's hidden treasure.

Enlisting the help of a convicted thief (Matthew Modine) in her quest, she straps on her cutlasses and takes to the high seas. From Amazon.co.uk Although this mega-budget action epic flopped at the box office with a resounding thud, Cutthroat Island has had a healthy shelf life on home video, where the film can be savoured in private as a spectacular guilty pleasure. Geena Davis plays Morgan, the swashbuckling daughter of an aging buccaneer who inherits one-third of a map to a secret pirate treasure. However, the map is in Latin, and she needs a lowdown thief and scoundrel (and presumably Latin scholar), played by Matthew Modine, to translate the map when they obtain the other two pieces. That's when the mayhem begins and the dashing duo race for the treasure against Morgan's scheming uncle (Frank Langella) and a hoard of greedy pirates. With wall-to-wall action ably handled by Davis' then-husband Renny Harlin, Cutthroat Island is more fun than its box-office performance would indicate.

--Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1 This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading. By Julian Evans on 17 Mar. 2009 Format: DVD No folks, I mean it. This has to be the best pirate movie ever made. It has pace, wit, style and a winning cast that are obviously enjoying every minute of it. There are no supernatural beings, mythical sea monsters or CG-laden blue-screen pirates... just people. And this is what a pirate movie should be In my opinion. Hidden treasure, romance, blue skies, gruesome antics and scurvied dogs 'aharrrring'. Factually, there were women pirates (Ann Bonney, Mary Reid) and although this is far from being a history lesson, its good to know that it stays within the 'possible'. From Patrick Malahide's asides to his lieutenant'Trotter' to Frank Langella's evil grimaces as 'Dawg' this film never ceases to please.

I own posters made for the market scene, an extra's costume, a continuity script and a prop master's plan for the poop deck of the Morning Star... in other words I simply love this movie. Famous for being the film that bankrupted its production company (Carolco) Cutthroat Island was directed by Renny Harlin and starred Geena Davis, Matthew Modine, Frank Langella, Maury Chaykin and Patrick Malahide. It easily beats Pirates of the Caribbean and was made many years before it. If you have only seen the Johnny Depp movie, buy a copy of Cutthroat Island and you'll be blown out of the water... Finally... take a look at the stunt where Morgan comes gambolling through an upper storey window straight into the driving seat of fast-moving coach and horses... now how did they do that! 23 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback... Thank you for your feedback. Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again By Flicky Ricky on 21 Aug. 2012 Format: Blu-ray Verified Purchase Badly neglegted when was realease as Jonny Depp getting all the glory for Pirates of.

I thin this is a better movie . Michael Douglas was asked to do the movie but because it had a female lead he would not accept second billing. Gfreat pirate movie harping back to the Burt Lancaster Crimson Pirate days. I enjoyed ver much and Bluray transfer is very good sound too. Amazon does it again good price and first calss produt Why shop anywhere else? 1 Comment 9 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback... Thank you for your feedback. Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again By Spike Owen TOP 500 REVIEWER on 16 July 2012 Format: DVD Verified Purchase Cutthroat Island is directed by Renny Harlin and written by Robert King and Marc Norman. It stars Geena Davis, Matthew Modine, Frank Langella, Maury Chaykin, Patrick Malahide, Stan Shaw and Rex Linn. Music is scored by John Debney and cinematography by Peter Levy. A film of many flaws, with a reputation akin to it being the devil of big budget failures, it is, however, a wonderful piece of piratical entertainment if you are prepared to see past the monetary excess.

Famously cited as the film that bankrupted Caroloco Pictures, the truth is that Carolco was going under anyway, the studio had filed for bankruptcy before Cutthroat Island had even been released, the box office performance was irrelevant, it wouldn't have made a bit of difference. And while no amount of hard sell marketing could have gotten the film to make back the $98 million spent making it, it received no support from distributor MGM who were in the process of being sold, so finances for marketing were not available. Harlin's movie has all the pirate movie ingredients crammed in to the plot, though it is a standard plot that sees Davis as female pirate Morgan Adams who leads her charges on a quest to find the ultimate treasure hoard. Problem is that the map is in three parts, each part held by separate people, one of which is Morgan's vicious Uncle Dawg (Langella). The hunt and race is on, and Harlin doesn't pause for breath, he's a kid in a sweet shop armed with wads of cash, but the money, as gargantuan as it is, is there on the screen; well except for the hiring of better actors that is. Read more › Comment 6 people found this helpful.

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback... Thank you for your feedback. Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again By brian from london on 18 Jan. 2007 Format: DVD I did not actually bother to watch this when it was on TV but I am very glad I bought the dvd. Geena Davis { who was excellent in the Long Kiss Goodnight } really does appear as if she had a fantastic time in making the film and the stunts are spectacular. This must have cost a fortune to make and perhaps the reason why it did not succeed at the Film box office was because there is so much action its near impossible to appreciate it all unless you have the benefit of your dvd controls. Geena Davis really does steal the film and its a delight to see her in action. Its a dvd that I will watch time and time again because there is so much going on its impossible to take it all in in one viewing. I am so glad it has the correct Aspect Ratio of 2.35:1 so much better than 1.85:1 It also has some very interesting Bonus material - well worth Buying Comment 10 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?

Yes No Sending feedback... Thank you for your feedback. Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again By Scribe25 on 4 Jun. 2013 Format: Blu-ray I am SO thankful to see this film with so many positive reviews!!!!! Two or three years before it's release star names were bring rumoured for a new pirate film - the first for many years! Michelle Pfeiffer's name came up as a possible lead. Time passed. But there was still excitement mounting for me. And then a title was announced to say that is was going to be called Cutthroat Island. Then a documentary appeared on television about the making off. That was a revelation: it was going to be great and Renny Harlin- and particularly GEENA DAVIS- were just SO enthusiastic. At the end she smiled broadly and said after filming was finished ''I can't believe I've got to stop being a pirate!''. Lovely stuff. It was so obvious she was having huge fun and satisfaction making it. She looked so great in the part - she was everything you wanted a female pirate to be! Yes, there really were at least two real female pirates Anne Bonney and Mary Read (my surname too).

So another wait, and then a cinema release. Due to family commitments I had to wait until the last day it was being shown at our local cinema. I was so excited, so expectant. Amazingly, but true, I was the ONLY person in the cinema that afternoon!!!! When it was over it had far exceeded my expectations - TERRIFIC from start to finish. Characters, story, acting, direction, spectacle, EXCITEMENT and one of the best soundtracks ever. I nearly stood up and applauded !!! GEENA was superb as were all the cast. A REAL story of pirates (no ghostly ships, skeleton figures, etc. etc.). JUST PIRATES!! I was so dismayed to hear that it flopped at the box office and sunk Carolco. TV critics haven't done it any favours either when shown on the small screen. IT IS A GREAT FILM - and yes -- it IS better than the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Read more › Comment 4 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback... Thank you for your feedback. Sorry, we failed to record your vote.

Please try again Cutthroat Island Cutthroat Island Posted on Sep 13, 2009 by Matt Gamble | 3 comments At first glance my watching Cutthroat Island might seem a bit out of place with the purported purpose of this website. My goal was to watch lesser known films, specifically films I knew nothing about going into them, in the hopes of finding the occasional gem as well as simply taking a few risks when compared to my standard movie watching habits. I’m as guilty of being selective as anyone else and this seemed like a fun way to test the cinematic waters. And, well, watching one of the biggest financial flops in film history certainly has its own brand of appeal. How often do you get to watch a movie that killed an entire genre of film? The pirate film, as most probably know, had a long, rich and financially successful relationship with Hollywood since Hollywood’s inception. They would have been considered the “blockbuster” films of their day, at least in comparison to modern day films. Big stars, big sets, bigger production budgets and big, big profits.

While over time the popularity of pirate films, and the assured giant box office takes, fluctuated within Hollywood, their were few genres considered as sure as a thing as the pirate film. By the time Cutthroat Island was being made the pirate film’s greatest glories had long since passed. While they were still being produced with regularity, they hadn’t dominated at the box office in years. So, as production began on Cutthroat Island, word soon began to spread that it would mark a return to Hollywood’s Golden Age, a time when people of all ages could lose themselves in the wonder of the movies. Cutthroat Island, it was promised, would mark the first step of many to a new Hollywood Golden Age. Even years later I still remember being inundated with the marketing push for Cutthroat Island. TV spots were everywhere, and I specifically remember all the television tabloids like Inside Edition and Access Hollywood offering numerous “exclusive” behind-the-scenes looks at the film. Geena Davis , whose star had steadily risen for years, was being pushed as the next Hollywood superstar, an actress who could excel in both dramatic and action roles. Her husband, and Cutthroat Island’s director, Renny Harlin , was being touted with equal fervor.

As the next “it” action director. The press simply couldn’t get enough of this husband and wife duo battling to resurrect a cherished but slightly forgotten genre. Cutthroat Island quickly became a looming juggernaut. A Christmas film that simply could not fail. Would not fail. That is, until it failed. Rather spectacularly as it turns out. Four brothers possess a map (split into three pieces) that will lead to a legendary treasure. A treasure so vast that it would make each and every one of them and their crew’s richer then they could possibly imagine. So naturally they start killing each other for their pieces of the map. So when Morgan Adams (Geena Davis) learns that her uncle Dawg Brown ( Frank Langella ) is going to kill her father ( Harris Yulin ) for his portion of the map. So she sets off to save him, recover the map and reach the treasure before Dawg can. We should get a few statistics out in the open so everyone knows just how big of a financial failure Cutthroat Island ended up being. Cutthroat Island had an estimated budget of $115 million to make the film and had a total box office take of just over $10 million.

Making Cutthroat Island one of the largest box office failures in terms of percentage of revenue lost as well as being the biggest box office flop in terms of sheer money being lost. Of course, this doesn’t even take into account the millions of dollars that were part of the films marketing budget. Based on sheer numbers, and the Guinness Book of World Records, Cutthroat Island is the biggest bomb in the history of film. So, kudos for that! Like seemingly most people, I had never seen Cutthroat Island before I finally had Netflix send me a copy, so I had no idea if the film was as bad as the size of its financial failure might imply. But since I had just made it through a film that had ruined its production company in Mutant , I figured why not sit through a second film that caused a production company to declare bankruptcy. Though, to be fair to Cutthroat Island, Carolco Pictures declared bankruptcy six weeks before Cutthroat Island made it to theatres. Cutthroat Island wasn’t entirely to blame though, as Last of the Dogmen and Showgirls had financially crippled the studio earlier that summer with their poor performances.

Cutthroat Island was simply the final nail in the coffin for a studio that only four years earlier had been on top of the world with Terminator 2: Judgment Day . So here I was, watching my second film in a row that had taken down a studio, but from the opening moments it became clear that this film was far superior to the mess that was Mutant. Though to be perfectly honest Cutthroat Island is far from a good film in its own right. But its faults are hardly anything unique to the films of that decade. Impossibly choreographed action sequences punctuated with awful one liners being the most obvious offense. Sure, they work great when being uttered by muscle bound Austrian’s, but by Geena Davis? Not so much. But really, the terrible jokes are hardly the biggest issue with Cutthroat Island. In reality, Cutthroat Island really doesn’t have a biggest problem, which is what makes it so fascinating. The film is by all accounts highly competent, if incredibly uneven. The acting by the leads is fine for the most part, but the majority of the secondary roles are bad caricatures at best. The dialogue can at times be witty and intriguing, and at others a mess of bad jokes and confusing references.

Even the action sequences, which are performed perfectly, are hampered by the fact that they are so obviously staged. One particular sequence stands out, in which Morgan jumps from a moving stagecoach into a shop, walks through it rather haphazardly, then proceeds to somersault out the far window and land in the exact same coach that she jumped out of a few seconds earlier. The choreography and execution of the scene is fantastic, yet it is plainly obvious that it could never actually occur, thus yanking the viewer straight out of the film. Perhaps the most head scratching of all is the strange plot point of the map being written in Latin. Because none of the pirates can read Latin, Morgan must find someone who can. In this case Shaw ( Matthew Modine ) a petty thief and scam artist who has been locked up by the local militia and is to be sold into slavery. He also just happens to know Latin, and so Morgan purchases his services. But in a stunningly odd twist the map isn’t actually written in Latin, it’s written backwards. Spoiler alert! That’s just fucking stupid. But how does a competent, if uneven, film become the biggest box office failure of all time? It’s hard to say.

The chemistry between Davis and Modine is non-existent, and while Davis is clearly giving everything she has in her role, she’s still badly miscast. Plus Harlin’s odd pacing choices certainly don’t help matters either. It’s easy to see why the film was such a critical failure, as the film has plenty of flaws and is easy to nit pick to death. You might even note that the film really doesn’t have any bankable stars, especially for such a huge budget. Then of course there was the fact that everyone knows that no one wants to watch pirate movies. Or perhaps it was just the release date? Action films, as everyone knows, just aren’t released on Christmas. Clearly that must be the reason. Or maybe it was all Carolco’s fault. By declaring bankruptcy weeks before the film opened they killed any chance of the film being successful. But honestly? I don’t think it was any of those. I think it might have been its PG-13 rating. Now that might seem like an odd assertion, but here me out.

At the time Cutthroat Island was released it was competing against a bevy of films, including Sabrina , Nixon , Grumpier Old Men , Waiting to Exhale , Jumanji and Heat . While the week after Cutthroat Island’s release we saw Mr Holland’s Opus , Richard III and Twelve Monkeys get released. Now of all those films, the two that Cutthroat Island was directly competing with were Jumanji and Heat which were both action films. Now I’m not much a fan of either film, but I think it is safe to say that Jumanji is a comparable film in quality while Heat is clearly superior to both. Jumanji is a sort of swashbuckling adventure story told at a breakneck pace to young kids and it held a great deal of appeal to them, while Heat is a gritty and realistic action film for adults. Both these films highlight Cutthroat Island’s weaknesses; that it is far too stuffy for younger kids, and it seems positively childish when aimed at older audiences. So when Cutthroat Island was finally released, in retrospect it seems pretty obvious why an average film failed so miserably.

It was competing against films that were at worst its equal in quality, but had greater appeal to the demographic that Cutthroat Island was trying to reach. Cutthroat Island was simply stuck in a wasteland called a PG-13 that was struggling to reach outside of a very small window of viewers. And with so many solid films being released it drowned in almost relative obscurity. Of course nowadays studios crave to grab a PG-13 rating, as the market has shifted in such a manner that that rating now has the widest range of appeal. Which makes one wonder, just how well would a film like Cutthroat Island do in today’s market? After sitting through it, I’m quite confident that it would do better then I would have originally believed. [gap][/gap] Cutthroat Island - All The Tropes Cutthroat Island All Subpages Create New Cutthroat Island is a 1995 pirate movie starring Geena Davis and directed by her then-husband Renny Harlin. The film has gone down in history as one of the biggest box office flops of all time; in the same league as the likes of The Adventures of Pluto Nash , Caligula , Cleopatra , Heavens Gate , and Ishtar .

It wasn't that the film failed to sell tickets. It earned 10-11 million dollars in the United States market alone, the 108th most successful film of its year. But when your budget is closer to 115 million, do the math. The film's failure effectively led to the closure of Carolco Pictures. The film is thus regarded as one of the last whose failure actually destroyed the studio that produced it. The film also killed the bankability of the pirate genre, which wasn't revived until Pirates of the Caribbean took off. Although it dented their careers at the time, Davis and Harlin both seem to have gotten on more or less okay in the long run. Female pirate Morgan Adams (Geena Davis) and her educated slave, William Shaw (Matthew Modine), are on a quest to recover the three portions of a treasure map. The treasure is hidden on the mysterious Cutthroat Island. Unfortunately, the final portion is held by her villainous uncle, Douglas ('Dawg') Brown (Frank Langella). Her crew is skeptical of her leadership abilities, so she must complete her quest before they mutiny against her.

This is made more difficult by the efforts of the Royal Navy from Jamaica under the command of the self-serving Governor Ainslee (Patrick Malahide) to end her piratical career. On her ship, Morning Star, Morgan starts the voyage to Cutthroat Island. Tropes used in Cutthroat Island include: Action Dress Rip : Geena pulls the skirt off her dress whilst being pursued by guards in Port Royal. Chain Pain : One of Dawg's men has chain in the place of his hand.

Question: Who was Geena Davis's husband when they made the loss-maker Cutthroat Island?
Answer: Renny Harlin